1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the installation of tiled counters in locations such as bathrooms and kitchens.
2. Background
At present, the installation of tiled counters is a messy, often difficult and time consuming work project, even when performed by experienced professionals. After the tiles have been selected and cost estimated, a skilled tile-setter has to come to the work site (kitchen or bathroom) and do the work. This work involves the use of many materials such as mortar, sheetrock or cement board, thinset and grout, leaving bits and pieces to be cleaned up.
The workmanship and quality of the installed counter is subject to the skill of the tile-setter, which is usually unknown to a homeowner at the time of contracting. If the homeowner finds the work to be shoddy or otherwise unsatisfactory, a dispute can arise that may be difficult to settle amicably. For builders who install counters in newly built houses, the problem is one of quality control as well as the installation time and cost. At present, even the smallest counter would take two days to complete.
Normally, a tile for a counter is first selected by the customer before installation and the customer must attempt to visualize what the completed product will look like. Such judgements are not easily made, sometimes leading to negative results where both customer and installer are disaffected. In this case, the customer usually has no choice but to live with the resulting installation although it may be unsatisfactory.
At present, even the smallest counter would take at least two days to complete by professional installers, causing unwelcome irritation of homeowners. This installation time and cost is even more important in commercial applications.
There have been a number of approaches to easing the problems and difficulties inherent in the time honored methods of installing tiled counters and walls for a bathroom and kitchen. Some involve pre-fabrication of various parts. However, all still require considerable tiling work to be performed by a skilled person at the installation site. An example is a recently issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,816,005 by Han, who describes a pre-fabricated tiled panel.
For installing on a counter or wall, the panels have to be individually placed on a counter base or wall surface and each fastened in place before adding the next panel until all are completed. A number of tiles are left off each panel to allow for fastening the panel to a base or wall. The panel edge trim is also generally omitted from the prefabricated panel.
While the Han approach described above is definitely an improvement on the current industry wide methods, it still requires the services of a skilled tile setter on site to install and properly join the panels. He must also install the missing tiles described above and other tiling such as edge trim; all of which has to be done on site, leaving a mess to be cleaned up. Furthermore, the Han approach does not permit a customer to see what a finished counter will look like before installation and before the customer commits to a tiled configuration.
There remains a universal need by homeowners and building contractors to overcome the ongoing problems of cost, quality control, customer inconvenience and possible dissatisfaction that are inherent in the current methods of installing a tiled counter or other tiled portion.